EARLY DECISIONgiven to students who applied by Nov.15. Prospective students who had beenawarded a Morehead scholarship werenotified the first week in March.but the Morehead scholars now arenotified by the last week in Octoberin an effort to position the Moreheadprogranl to be more competitive withother universities and their ED programs.(See related story, Page 25.)For those students who apply ED,there are three possible decisions. Theycan be admitted, in which case an enroll-ment deposit of $300 is due by Jan. 4.Students deferred, or pended, are releasedfrom the ED commitment and will beconsidered again in March. Deferredstudents can submit additional grades,achievements and test scores, as well asapply to other schools. For those studentsdenied, it's time to start looking atother institutions.Roughly 17,000 applications areAbout 20 percentof the college-bound

How it works nowToday, to minimize confusion, thedeadline and notification dates were keptthe same, but students who apply beforethe first deadline date in October noware doing so as ED candidates, whichmeans that the offer for acceptance isbinding. They agree not to apply forED at any other college or university.The November and January deadlinesare respectively referred to as the regularand final decision deadlines. Preferencefor Freshman Honors Program still isgiven to students applying by Nov. 15,population isapplying ED.

Says Lucido} (Itsclear we weremissing out on aportion of themarketplace.)

Carolina is keenly aware of the competition from other universities, particularly from "crossover" schools-
those to which students often apply in addition to applying to UNC.

received each year for about 3,400 seatsin the freshman class. For the enteringclass of 2001, Lucido's staff hoped toreceive 1,500 ED admissions applica-tions, but they were delighted to actuallyend up with 2, 100. Of those, 450 wereadmitted, 1,000 were deferred and 650were denied. Mter the deferred appli-cations are reviewed again, Lucidoexpects a total of800 to 900 students,or approxinlately 25 percent of theentering class, to have been admittedED. For the November deadline, Lucidonotes there were approximately 11,000applications, which is 2,000 more thanthe year before; he expected another4,000 for the final deadline in January.Do the students who apply EDdiffer in any way from previous yearswhen students applied early action?Lucido says he doesn't think so. Eachyear, the Office of UndergraduateAdmissions models its selection criteriaon past admissions decisions. In otherwords, what worked before in termsof deciding a student was well-suitedfor Carolina remains very much a partof the current process, maybe evenmore so now with ED. Lucido said:"We felt that if a student was to commit24